[Infowarrior] - U.S. had advance notice of Britain’s plan to detain reporter Glenn Greenwald’s partner

[Richard Forno]

U.S. had advance notice of Britain’s plan to detain reporter Glenn Greenwald’s partner

By Philip Rucker and Karla Adam,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/uk-police-urged-to-explain-detention-of-reporter-glenn-greewalds-partner/2013/08/19/f2a3159c-08d9-11e3-89fe-abb4a5067014_print.html

LONDON— British authorities gave U.S. officials advance notice that they planned to detain the Brazilian partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, who worked with leaker Edward Snowden to expose details of the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.

The White House received a “heads up” that London police would detain David Miranda on Sunday at Heathrow Airport, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters Monday. He added that the U.S. government did not request Miranda’s detention, calling it “a law enforcement action” taken by the British government.

“This was a decision that was made by the British government without the involvement and not at the request of the United States government,” Earnest said. “It’s as simple as that.”

Pressed repeatedly on the matter, Earnest would not condemn the nine-hour detention of Miranda, nor did he say whether British authorities shared with the United States any intelligence they might have extracted from him.

“I don’t have a way to characterize for you any of the conversations between the British government and the U.S. government on this matter, other than to say that this is a decision that they made on their own and not at the request of the United States,” Earnest said. “In terms of, you know, the kinds of classified, confidential conversations that are ongoing between the U.S. and our allies in Britain, I’m not able to characterize that for you.”

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A defiant Greenwald said any attempt to intimidate journalists would ultimately backfire.

“If the U.K. and U.S. governments believe that tactics like this are going to deter or intimidate us in any way from continuing to report aggressively on what these documents reveal, they are beyond deluded,” Greenwald said. “If anything, it will have only the opposite effect: to embolden us even further.”



© The Washington Post Company

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